Creative Commons licenses have become an integral part of everyday academic publishing and archiving. Until a few years ago, the question “Who’s afraid of Creative Commons?” seemed to be justified, but today the signs are increasingly pointing to normalization, even if there are still isolated “Gallic villages” in some disciplines. The article gives an overview of Creative Commons in the context of copyright law and points out their possibilities, but also limits and problem areas. The licenses are presented in the latest version (4.0) in a second step. Finally, individual questions of „usability“ in the context of a repository and a user-friendly approach are addressed.